April 8, 2024 / Tinseltown Tarot
While it has been logistically difficult for me to post the Messages of Divine Love via this wordpress site, I’m wanted to give an alternative to having a substack subscription so I can better archive these for future reference. However, I will always be posting these to substack first: https://sharpsweetbella.substack.com
Intro Notes to the Deck & Reading
Last week’s reading demonstrated the strife, pressure, and discontent that comes with growth, but I hope it helped to illuminate ways for us to get through this together – to get to today, a solar eclipse/new moon in Aries along with a collection of interstellar alignments that just made everything feel that much more potent. Opting for a little old Hollywood glamour, I hoped we might finally see things turning around.
This week we start with the Star card, that impossible dream in the sky – the one that looked like it might never be possible from the limited Towers we were locked in before. Now that those towers have been coming down, we might be standing in the debris and dust of a dying world, but new dreams are revealing themselves, pathways we didn’t even know were possible are “illuminated” in the queertastic brightness of this solar eclipse/new moon in Aries. Yes…you heard me right.
Nothing screams this new moon energy to me more than the glamorous brightness of my queer community. We know the black light kisses exchanged in dark corners of clubs and parties we felt safe enough to be ourselves in. Few understand what the “shadow glow” feels like more than the people who had to live and grow in the dark corners of closets only to break out of lonely towers of punishment by living their lives out loud. Yes, my babes, this is Aries kick-ass energy and the brilliance of living life authentically.
Don’t get me wrong, it won’t be easy – there’s plenty of debris to sort through that will bring painful goodbyes. But it will also bring some hopeful hellos. We aren’t out of the shadow until the full moon time, but I hope today cleared the decks a bit to make everything seem a little more manageable.
Where We Are This Week
The Star
Crown Chakra
The Star is a familiar card for any fan of these readings. But this week, despite all the squeezing, dizzying, WTF energy that has been swirling about, we are about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. But part of that is choosing to finally let go of our worries about what others will think about us “following our own star”. You know exactly what you want to do and the life you want to achieve. Let go of the naysayers and believe in yourself for a change.
Messages from our Guides
Strength
Solar Plexus Chakra
Despite what many gurus will tell you strength doesn’t start in the mind or the body. Strength, courage, and willpower all obey the one flame that drives you – your soul. It starts in the seed of your humanity, your shining soul that acts with confidence when following its purest joy. That is the part of you that needs to lead right now. The part of you that is your ride-or-die, biggest fan, and fiercest protector. Walk confidently in the direction of your dreams knowing that you not only are a survivor, but a thriver.
Messages from Lady Gaia/Mother Earth
Seven of Swords (R)
Third Eye Chakra
Have you noticed that by and large it’s getting easier to see through the deceptive framing of mass media, electeds, religion, and celebrity status? But are we really drawing the right lessons from it? Just like Princess Diana’s death should have made us more conscious and aware of the deceptive nature of fame, but revelations such as Quiet on Set often stop at the scandalous outcome instead of examining the insidious parallels to our own lives. The problem is, people often don’t look at their own lives – the detached nature of celebrity gives us room to judge and say “Well, that’s just Hollywood” instead of “OMG, that’s what [insert name of a “trusted adult” in your life] has been doing.” See beyond the scandals to understand the threads that connect to the way these manipulations might be playing out closer to home. Be watchful, not paranoid.
Messages from the Ancients
Three of Cups
Sacral Chakra
There is an abundance of joy coming from the ancients who are helping us. Taking the hint from last week, engaging with the gifts of our lineages, we found a strength we might not have had a month ago. For me, it was a resistance to needing to be liked, approved of, validated by the world at large. For others, it might be aligning with a better routine of self-care or rest. The gifts arrived in subtle ways, interwoven with the gifts of others who have been delivered into our lives. They are happy to be invited to be part of the squad that will lead us to victory – this is a sign it’s okay to enjoy those in your sphere today.
Messages from Our Future Selves
Six of Pentacles)
Root Chakra
The basis of empathy is rooted not just in the heart, but in the viscera of our lived experience. It is when we recognize our suffering in someone else, we each out to share a meal or a prayer, a dollar or a ride that we start unfurl the immense generosity that has been waiting to be expressed. And there is nothing that helps us build resilience better than being the support that no one offered us. The future will be built not by those who exploit our humanity, but those who recognize the interconnectedness of it.
Messages from Mother Mary
The Empress
Crown Chakra
When Mother Mary brings up the Empress it is a sign to both you and me that it is time to step into your righteously compassionate, heart-centered leadership selves. This is always who the Empress is for me, who Mary has been for me – soft power. The kind that works through the undercurrent, shifting the mood, feeding the soul, urging it toward justice and connection. Embody this energy to transform the gifts we received from our ancestors into the healing empathy the world needs for the future.
Extra Card
Justice
Throat Chakra
Vengance and justice are treated as synonyms by the rest of the world. The problem is there is no stopping point. If I wrong you, then you wrong me back to “punish” me for what I did, you’ve declared yourself judge & executioner, without stopping to examine how bias, emotion or recicprocity factors in? Nah…I will find whatever you inflict on me as too much and then I’ll be plotting my revenge. Over and over it goes…throughout humanity. Can we be brave enough to be the cycle breakers? Take a discerning eye to our own expressions of justice this week. Are we motivated by the restoration of balance & peace or the infliction of punishment from a space of wounded dominance?
Undercurrents
The Tower (R)
Root Chakra
The Tower (R) showed up two weeks ago (“No Husk, No Tamale”) to declare that there was no turning back now. The structures are coming down or have already crash landed. Now is the time to sift through the debris to find what values, traditions & ideals still belong to us and to finally say goodbye to those that don’t. This is the hard work of it all…but know that any attempt to rebuild things exactly as they were will pull you under and make the recovery that much harder. We can never go back to the way it was…which is why the Star is at the center of this reading a guide drawing us to better horizons.
Final Advice
Seven of Wands (R)
Heart Chakra
When we are feeling under threat, our insecurity urges us to defend ourselves…sometimes to the point of cruelty. such as cutting people out of our lives simply because they didn’t applaud our revenge plot, only to find that listening to their criticism could have saved us a lot of turmoil and pain. Or telling a partner they are “worthless” because they didn’t do things exactly the way we wanted. What’s really driving us to spread that kind of pain? Are we truly under attack or do we just resist the ego blow of finding out we were wrong? This week, especially with an eclipse, is a good time to re-examine the ways we might rush to burn bridges and play the victim when others point out the weaknesses of our plans. Stop the cruel clapbacks by addressing the insecurity driving them and instead learn to build bridges to create understanding.
Parting words from a Geek Empress
Delving into my lineage with my ancestors over the past year has been a humbling experience in mending the broken hearts and wounded choices of those who came before me. The queer members of the family who hid their desires or worse, punished themselves. Then there were the straight members of the family who judged or worse, outed those family members. The queer trauma that lives in my veins and bones sits alongside colonization – a truce built from illusions of supremacy, fears of otherness. When I look at their journey and compare it to mine, I know that I was born who I was to bridge the divide they created within our family history before me.
Yet, how much of who I am was also influenced by the storytelling that reflected my experience so accurately? There is one moment that especially stands out for me as a Xennial, the little sliver of a generation from 1977 – 1983. As a closeted bisexual Latina, to see Enrique Vasquez played by Wilson Cruz in My So-Called Life, gave me a chance to see not just myself, but my community, my family, especially my growing chosen family. While I had embraced my gay brother, had campaigned against Amendment 2 in Colorado and had dated a boy or two who would eventually come out as gay, I hadn’t accepted my bisexuality. That coming out moment on screen sent a radiant wave of “I feel seen” through all of us who had been hiding in the shadows of the closet. It was transformative storytelling.
I would kiss a girl for the first time the next year at 18 and not again for ten more years. And a few months after that, my own coming out story was projected into the public eye (I had reporters calling me for comment), by those who I now feel viewed me as a threat to their precious paradigms of power. I had to be punished, like my queer ancestors before me. I had to be contained, like the brujas and gifted women who dreamed me into being. I had to be shamed, like the colonized acquiescence that gave us lasting anxiety. Our queerness starts as a shadow of our self, our secret self, the “monster” that they call us to justify cruel rejection and punishing violence, the true evil of humanity.
Yet, in the black lit corners we discover ourselves. We emerge from the shadows, with a distinct aura of hope. Not only did we survive, we have experience a metamorphasis. No matter the pain we endured, the times we questioned our worth, felt more alone than words can encompass – each and every single time one of us steps out of these creaky walls of containment, we too issue a wave of radiance to others around us. It is that joy, that truth, that North Star that is so untamable, so threatening that towers, closets, jails and walls have to be constructed to contain it all. The book bans, the anti-trans bills, drag protests, and “don’t say gay” are a way to contain the uncontainable – an unraveling of rainbow brilliance joy – a truth too gorgeous to be hidden ever again.
And while I didn’t intend for this to be a totally platonic love letter to Wilson Cruz – to see a thriving, beautiful gay-queer-trans-nonbinary family in Star Trek Discovery now is giving my kids a chance to see themselves in ways that likewise will transform us for generations to come. And considering how few Latino actors get cast at all, much less that kind of longevity, this kind of full circle empowerment matters…our storytelling matters.
And in the shadow of this eclipse, may we all find the strength to glitter and glow together.
No matter what happens this week, remember I am with you always in love 💖
Book a service:
If you enjoyed this post, here are some other ways to support my work
La Madonna Rosa 